Purpose of a Film Trailer

When creating films, producers would find that the large investment could set them back many millions and in order to ensure a safe return on their large investment producers would often release a trailer which is designed to attract and encourage a wide audience to come watch the film when released. A trailer is specifically designed to advertise a film which would be released within a month or so after the trailers have been released, this is done so the audience could develop a sense of impatience and excitement to go watch the film and the more they would see the trailer the more they would be intrigued. Film trailers are mostly set to be around 1 to 3 minutes long as producers would have to condense the films story line to make it fascinating for an audience to watch and also understanding as a variety of editing tools would be used which would create and show the stages of equilibrium within the movie and create a decent climax.

A film trailers main purpose is to drag its targeted audience to come watch the film as this is obtained by following a three-act structure in which the first scenes would introduce the main characters, a scene in which the climax tends to build and the suspense starts to be created and then lastly the trailer would then be left at a cliff hanger which makes many questions arise in the audiences thoughts which would pull them to watch the film as film directors would structure the trailer till this stage and then editors would make it more appealing… The way in which trailers become appealing is through the various editing techniques which are used, there are many conventions which support this as mostly all film trailers would contain sound which is generally built up from start till the ending of the trailer; intertitles are widely used in film trailers as this gives information based on the films background such as ‘Based on a true story’, intertitles could also be used which instantly hauls the audience into watching the film, ‘From the directors of’, from this the audiences could relate to any previous movies from the makers of a film and instantly judge how well the film would be in the box office.

The whole purpose to release a film trailer is so that films could be recognised by an audience and instantly become a box office hit which would benefit the film on investment returns and also create a huge audience to come watch the film when released as this is mainly why film makers spend hundreds of thousand pounds on producing and editing a trailer which would set a high standard within audiences and institutions for the film’s release.